Carew ‘I Hope Well’
I visited Carew Castle and actually saw the back of a man and my mother said this man looked like my uncle. When we approached him it turned out he was a relative. His face didn’t reflect our family but his body shape did. I thought about genetics and how we are all the result of hundreds of years of decisions made by people we don’t know yet we are related by genetic lineage. I saw the tomb of Sir Nicholas Carew next to his wife in a Carew church. There is a poem below mine which is of a distant relative, perhaps poetry is part of this lineage. My father and sister write poetry. None of us knew we were poets until in adult life we shared.
This of course is my father’s line, I never considered my mothers line and have come to understand because material wealth is handed down through males and patriarchy. My mother’s line was Scottish.
In Kerala in India it is matrilineal line, therefore the wealth goes down the female side, interestingly this is the most egalitarian province in India. Money divided gender as well. I never realised how gender and money has caused major schisms in our world. For women it sent a message of not being worth anything, that their lineage has no value. This unspoken belief is present today I am awakening to the reality of women. As a woman there is a part of my heart that is very sad about this. I know many women who are heroes but will never be known.
Here is a link regarding Sir Nicholas Carew as holder as keeper of the Privy Seal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Carew_(Lord_Privy_Seal)
However, it is important that I integrate both the male and female sides of my family. Here is the poem that outlines my father’s line.
Carew is Our Castle on the Hill
Carew of Cornwall,
Is the first name of where you live,
Symbolic of who you are,
For the land is our family,
Markings of Celtic cross to bare,
As Welsh tongues speak of Caeriw in original letters,
As Caer (fort) and rhiw (hill),
Carew of Wales is the dweller at the fort on the hill,
Yet Carey of Normandy is a pleasant stream,
Yet claimed by the Irish clans, including the O’Ciardhas of Kildare,
A petition on record in England to relieve this identity crisis,
Two brothers asking Queen Elizabeth I to clear up the pronounciation of the name Carew or Carey?
Her reply was “You are Carew and what care You” pointing to the brother Cary
“And you are Carey and what care I”
Yet to wear this coat one must seek a higher perspective in the flow of your life.
The castle of Carew,
Is every Carew’s Castle,
Whether you are a Norman or a Howard,
A man’s home is always his castle.
Pembrokeshire in Wales,
Was the site of the Norman conquest in the 11th century,
A fortification that turned to stone masonry,
For Sir Nicholas de Carew (1311) was the architect,
Rhys ap Thomas expanded and extended three centuries later,
For to be a friend of King Henry the VIII one must dance and sing,
The Tudor king had many flings,
Mary Boleyn wife of William Carey,
Was granted the family manors and estates,
For there is no misdemeanor in this court without law,
Trading places for Anne Boleyn he delights in his new procession.
As the monarch is absolute rule by obsession,
Dissolution of monasteries became his tool,
For the fool finally divorces the church from the state,
That heralds the marriage of Wales to England,
A tense union of opposites subdued by an overlord,
An accord abdicating sovereignty for order,
Yet the walls of Carew castle withheld many secrets,
As time transformed union to subtle succession,
the Motto of Wales – Cymru am byth
“Wales forever”
Sir John Perrot (1530) an illegitimate son of Henry VII converted the castle into a mild manor,
Sir George Carew a caretaker during the Civil war,
As royalists and parliamentarians garrisoned the fortress,
An air of wealth, political intrigue and unrest,
Was another test to be finally abandoned in 1686.
The Carew family shield granted to Sir Thomas Carew (1415) is the coat of arms,
Leader of men-at-arms and archers in the battle of Agincourt with Henry V,
The lions of English crusades,
Carew, Carey, de Carron, de Curio , Carrow are but all one name bestowing the motto…
“I hope well.”
The Spring
Now that the winter’s gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender;
gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow;
wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long’d-for May.
Now all things smile;
only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice,
which still doth hold
Her heart congeal’d,
and makes her pity cold.
The ox,
which lately did for shelter fly into the stall,
doth now securely lie
In open fields;
and love no more is made
By the fireside,
but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season;
only she doth carry
June in her eyes,
in her heart January.